Fabula di Orfeo: An Entertainment in Early Renaissance Italian Poetry & Song
When:
Saturday, Dec 08, 2018 8:00p -
10:00p
Saturday, Dec 08, 2018 8:00p -
10:00p
Where:
Lindsay Chapel, First Church in Cambridge Congregational
11 Garden St. (entrance on Mason St.)
Cambridge, MA 02138
Admission:
$25/$20
Categories:
Performing Arts
Event website:
www.duomaresienne.com
Music for Viols and Friends continues its season on Saturday, December 8, 2018 with a musical performance of Italian renaissance poet Angelo Poliziano’s 1480 lyrical drama Fabula di Orfeo. The musicians, who will be performing music by Tromboncino, Cara, Dalza and others, are Burcu Gulec, mezzo-soprano; Michael Collver, countertenor and cornetto; George Lernis, percussion; Steven Lundahl, sackbut and recorders; James Williamson and Carol Lewis, viola da gamba; and Olav Chris Henriksen, lutes.
Angelo Poliziano was an Italian humanist and poet in service of Lorenzo de Medici in 15th-century Florence. Many of the best Italian composers of his day, including Cara and Tromboncino, set his poems to music. His Fabula di Orfeo, with musical accompaniment, premiered in Mantua in 1480. As no period musical setting of Poliziano’s epic tale of the Orfeo story has survived, Michael Collver has chosen frottole (Italian secular songs of the 15th century) as a basis for his reconstruction of an Orfeo from more than one hundred years prior to the (now much more famous) opera by Monteverdi and Striggio.
Michael Collver is a world-class cornetist and countertenor and has concertized throughout Europe and the U.S. with ensembles including Sequentia and Boston Camerata, as well as Project Ars Nova (P.A.N.), of which he was a founding member. Burcu Gulec has performed all across her native Turkey and the United States, singing music of various styles from the Middle East and Asia Minor, as well as early music, jazz, improvisation and electronic music. A native of Cyprus, percussionist George Lernis travels regularly throughout the United States and Europe, performing with Dunya, Muscari, Mina Cho, and many other prominent jazz and world music groups. James Williamson has played early strings and sung tenor with a variety of groups in the Boston area, including Long and Away, Capella Clausura, Canto Armonico and the Choir of the Church of the Advent. Steven Lundahl, Olav Chris Henriksen and Carol Lewis are also well known in the U.S. and abroad as instrumentalists, performing and recording frequently with ensembles including Boston Camerata, Waverly Consort, Emmanuel Music, Boston Baroque, and many others.
